Daniela Pierre-Bravo Teaches Us How to 'Earn It'

Daniela Pierre-Bravo has never met an obstacle more formidable than her will. Disqualified from college scholarships due to her legal status, she built a thriving local Mary Kay business to pay for it. Invited to an interview for an unpaid internship in NYC, she took an 18-hour overnight bus from Ohio and showed up the next morning. And nailed it. Now And now she's the coauthor of the new book, Earn It: A ​ Career Guide for Women in Their Twenties and Beyond with ​ ​ ​ MSNBC Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinski.

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Clip (Daniela I didn't have any professional mentors. I didn't have a roadmap. I didn't have Pierre-Bravo): parents who knew the lay of the land. I didn't have anybody advising me. And so, something happens when you're the only person that you can count on and you're not really waiting for anybody to show you what to do.

Menendez: For a long time, I knew Daniela Pierre-Bravo as a producer on MSNBC's Morning Joe, but recently I learned her full story. She's a dreamer who made her way through college selling Mary Kay, earned a coveted spot as an NBC page, and quickly proved herself as a whip-smart television producer. And now, she's the co-author of the new book, Earn It!, a career guide for women in their 20s and ​ ​ beyond.

Daniela, so fun for me to be the producer and for you to be the guest.

Pierre-Bravo: Yay! So fun to be here. Thank you so much.

Menendez: I'm happy to have you. You were born in Chile. You moved to Ohio around age 11. How did you learn that you were undocumented?

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Pierre-Bravo: Well, I was trying to get ready for college, and I didn't really understand. I remember going on an eighth-grade trip to Washington and waiting at the bus, because I couldn't go to the White House. And it didn't hit me that I didn't have an ID. At the time, I had a social security number, so I didn't really pry. I didn't really ask. I don't know if that was subconscious or not. But, it didn't really hit me until I started looking for colleges.

And I really tried my best throughout college to not only be a great student but be in those advanced classes and extracurriculars, because I really wanted to have a good opportunity to go to a great college. But, then it hit me that my parents couldn't afford it, which I kind of knew, but then, when I was trying to find loans, come to find out that, "Oh, I'm undocumented. I can't qualify for any loans."

Menendez: Were you ever concerned for your safety after that?

Pierre-Bravo: I don't know if I was scared or concerned for my safety, but I became sort of fearless, because I lived in a small town in Ohio. I didn't have any professional mentors. I didn't have a roadmap. I didn't have parents who knew the lay of the land. I didn't have anybody advising me. And so, something happens when you're the only person that you can count on and you're not really waiting for anybody to show you what to do. And you kind of have to figure it out for yourself. So I just remember being kind of fearless about it all.

Menendez: And it wasn't on your radar that ICE could show up at your front door and pull your family apart?

Pierre-Bravo: I was just so trying to get myself into college and keep going forward that I didn't think about it.

Menendez: Did your plans for when you grew up change when you learned about your status?

Pierre-Bravo: I think it definitely limited my possibilities of what I could be. So, I always wanted to work in TV. I had this lofty idea of being part of how culture is told and bringing to the table different voices and people that reflected my background. And so, I wanted to be part of how that culture was told. Ironically, that's my job now.

But, at the time, I realized that I didn't have a way to do that. That was kind of a nearly impossible plan. So I thought, "Well, I'm going to go to college, try to take it one step at a time. And I'll go to law school, because that's the only way that I can keep going in my education, and I won't have to find a job." So I was just really trying to take it one step at a time.

Menendez: You now—congratulations—you joined the long list of Latina to Latina guests who either thought they'd go to law school or did go to law school and then didn't become lawyers.

You go to college in-state in Ohio. Most students have a work-study job, but you did something very different to get through Miami University.

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Pierre-Bravo: Well, I wish I could have at school. I wish I had the opportunity to work legally. I would have loved that. But, I found out that that wasn't an option for me, and I would have to get creative. I mean, really creative about my options, because I ended up scouring the internet every night. This was like a ritual. As soon as I found out I was undocumented, and even when I was in college, every night I would scour the internet for private scholarships, for writing contests, for Craigslist jobs, whether it was busing tables short-term or working at bars as a barback.

And, you know, Mary Kay was something that came to the table when I was 18 years old. I learned that you could be your own boss and I thought, well, if nobody would hire me, I'll hire myself. And, what's interesting is that I had to take a semester off school to really build that business, because, at the time, I had a social security number, so I was able to use that.

And I was hiring women around rural Ohio and learning on YouTube Accounting 101 and teaching them all these different ways to build their business. And I was in the shadows at the time, so nobody knew what was really going on.

Menendez: You're the first person in your family to go to an American college. What were you expecting when you moved into that dorm?

Pierre-Bravo: What was I not expecting? I was just so excited to experience it all. You know, my parents were so out of the loop in terms of what a college dorm was and what the whole process was. I came in, I kid you not, with a cardboard box with like canned food. And no decorations, no nothing. And I found here that in the US having a dorm is like a pretty big deal when it comes to finding comfy and cute things to put around, and I barely brought anything else other than those canned good products and this $49.99 Walmart buy for Mary Kay. It was this plastic container with a little lock to put all my Mary Kay products. So, honestly, my dorm room was just covered in Mary Kay products, because that was my lifeline. That was my lifeline.

Menendez: As you unpacked your things, looked around, what did you think and feel about your surroundings and about the other people you were going to school with?

Pierre-Bravo: I was so hopeful. I remember forgetting that I was undocumented, and forgetting about all of sort of the difficulties on getting myself to college and all the reasons why I wouldn't succeed. And I had, for the first time, hope, because I thought, "Well, if I can make it into college year one, it's only uphill from here." But, there's a lot of obstacles that came during those first year and second years of college that really almost impeded me from finishing.

Menendez: Like what?

Pierre-Bravo: Well, the second year ... You know, I was so excited, I had gotten into all my extracurriculars that I wanted to be in, and mock trial, which was like a number one nationally-recognized organization. I told you, I wasn't cool.

Menendez: I love you more and more. Keep talking.

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Pierre-Bravo: And, this great business fraternity, and I was so excited. I had made lots of friends, like many people do the first year of college. And the summer before I came back as a sophomore ... I never had enough money to go back to school for the entire semester, so was always taking it one step at a time. And I remember having a couple of thousands of dollars. I think it was like $2,000 or something, just to get me by for the first couple of weeks of college that sophomore semester until I figured it out.

I was on a delivery for Mary Kay and I ended up hitting a parked car, and obviously, in no situation to argue with the owner. I said, "Give me your number." And the number was the amount of money that it took to go back to school, and so, that was it, and it was a huge roadblock. And think about not having anybody tell you, "You can do it. This is going to get better." And even my mom, who was the rock, who's always like, "There's always a way"... I remember sitting at a Ray's parking lot and her and I just sobbing and holding each other, because both of us truly felt that this could be the end of all the hard work.

And I just remember crying and pounding the floor when I got home that night, because there was no way forward at that point.

Menendez: And how did you make that way forward?

Pierre-Bravo: It was interesting. So, I prayed. And I went to bed, and the next morning, it's so crazy. I woke up and I had such clarity of what was going to happen next. So, I had six months that I realized, "Okay. I'm not going to go back to school these first six months. Let that be and work your butt off."

So, I took the Mary Kay stuff that I was doing and built it into a robust business. I hit senior consultant status in six months. That's when I started hiring those women around rural America, 40-, 50-, 60-year-old women who were under my team.

Menendez: Who had no idea they were working for an undocumented immigrant.

Pierre-Bravo: No idea. And just teaching them the skill sets to build their own business. But I was working, I was getting up at 8am, cold-calling people, cold-emailing people, running into people at malls and asking them what skincare they use, and then do my little spiel about Mary Kay.

I was busing tables. I was waitressing. I was hostessing. All short-term, paying jobs that could pay cash. Six months later, I was back at it and back in college.

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Menendez: Summer before you graduate, you apply for internships in New York. Why New York?

Pierre-Bravo: It's the city of possibilities. I was in such a small town with such limited opportunities that this was the place, if any, that would give me that ability to find something to hold onto.

Menendez: You're super savvy. And so, instead of putting your Ohio address on those resumes, you put the New York City address where you were ostensibly living in a dorm in New York. Pretty daring move.

Pierre-Bravo: Well, you know what I've found out? In this world, people will always make excuses to do the easy thing. And the easy thing would've been for a hiring manager in New York City, in an unpaid internship, to not call somebody in the middle of Ohio if it's an unpaid internship that starts in two weeks.

So, I decided, I'm not going to make any excuses to get on whatever I have to get on, to get to the interview the next day, if that's what it calls for. So I'm just going to say that I live in New York City. And I always said, if my qualifications on my resume, which were all true, ended up matching the job description, then getting there would be a piece of cake.

Menendez: And so, then you get a call from P. Diddy's production company.

Pierre-Bravo: Yeah.

Menendez: And they're like, "Okay, great. Can you be here tomorrow?"

Pierre-Bravo: Right. Bad Boy Entertainment called me and they did a quick phone screening interview and they said, "Yeah, can you come in tomorrow?" And I go, heart pounding, "Yes, I can. I'll be there tomorrow."

I didn't know how I was going to get there. I couldn't, obviously, as you know, get on a plane or drive. So I got on an 18-hour bus ride, nine stops through the night. Didn't sleep. Washed up in a stinky, smelly, Port Authority rest station.

Menendez: Very glamorous.

Pierre-Bravo: And made it to the internship interview.

Menendez: You realize how wild that all sounds, retrospectively?

Latina to Latina: Daniela Pierre-Bravo Teaches Us How to ‘Earn It’ 5

Pierre-Bravo: It was all a blur, but I feel like I was just so hungry to just get one chance.

Menendez: Right. And then you got it.

Pierre-Bravo: Yeah. I got it.

Menendez: And another internship.

Pierre-Bravo: And another internship. You know what I found out? MTV Networks, which is the second unpaid internship that called me back, they just asked for a phone interview. And I was like, "Why didn't I just offer to do that?" But that's the thing. When you have limited options and not a way forward, you just got to do what you've got to do and not make any excuses for it.

Menendez: Tell me about the first time you met the co-author of Earn It!, Mika Brzezinski.

Pierre-Bravo: Oh my gosh. First of all, I was such a fangirl. Like a silent fangirl, like I never came out and told her. But, it was when I was in an NBC page, actually. I didn't know Morning Joe, but I had this assignment to cut clips of pop moments of all the MSNBC shows. And I would start with Morning Joe, and I would start the day, and I found out that I would spend the whole day just watching Morning Joe clips, because I loved Mika and Joe.

And, I remember, none of the pages really wanted this assignment, because it's like, "Who's going to wake up at four in the morning and want to get coffees and have a smile on their face?" And that was me, because I was just so excited. And I remember coming into Mika's dressing room, because the coordinator at the time was going to introduce me to her while she was in hair and makeup. And I go in, and she goes, "Are you getting my coffee every morning?" And I'm really excited to tell her, “Yes.” And she's like, "Good. You better not eff it up."

So, that was my introduction to Mika. Our relationship has evolved since then.

Menendez: But I also hear you're very good at getting coffee the way it's meant to be.

Pierre-Bravo: I am really good at getting a hot, black-eyed misto. Yes, yes, yes.

But that's really one of the reasons why she noticed me. I mean, as silly as that sounds and as menial as getting coffee might be, you think about all the people that are coming through that revolving door: whether it's interns, whether it's NBC pages, whether it's production assistants. People are constantly coming in, and I was kind of strategic about seeing what she had told me in the green room that morning and saying, "Okay. I'm going to take this as an opportunity to make the best black coffee that I could ever make," and that was something that really stuck with her.

Menendez: You stood outside Starbucks waiting for them to open and you tried to negotiate with them to open it up.

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Pierre-Bravo: So, I got in a lot of trouble with the managers at Starbucks many a time, because they didn't open until like 5am, and they told us that they would open 10 minutes early, and Mika would come in the building at 5:50am. So, I was like, "Okay, no. That's going to work." And so, I would just stand outside of Starbucks literally pounding on the door every single day when I was supposed to be ready to go print scripts. But, I was pounding on the Starbucks door, pleading them to please open up a few minutes early, so I could time it exactly to when Mika got out of her car so that she didn't have to wait in makeup without her coffee. So, I was really serious about my coffee.

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Menendez: You share your story with Mika—ultimately, explain that you want to create access for women like you, women who may not have other people to guide them through this. And that is how Earn It! is born. So, let's go through your career ​ ​ advice.

Pierre-Bravo: Well, there is a lot, and I'm really excited for people to read Earn It! Some of the ​ ​ advice that's in the book starts out from the moment you walk in the door, and getting your foot in the door, and we have great advice in terms of how to build a network. You know, we partnered up with Harvard University and we found out that 70% of young women are not comfortable networking. That's crazy, because networking is such a way in the door and to gain access and leverage to connections and people that will further your career.

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Menendez: There's a part of the book that I really loved where you compare two different emails, or two different notes you'd received on LinkedIn, and explained why one of them really worked and one of them really didn't.

Pierre-Bravo: Yeah. So, one of them, which I ... I get these type of emails often. There is this person on LinkedIn that reached out to me and said something like, "Hello. Hi, Daniela. I would like to have a job at NBC Universal. Can you point me in the right direction in order to do so?"

Menendez: And I get that. I understand.

Pierre-Bravo: Do you? I mean, I don't know. But because—

Menendez: If you have no guidance, if you have no coaching ... But that's why I want to talk about it. That's not the right note to send.

Pierre-Bravo: Yeah, yeah. This is why we wrote Earn It! ​

So, there are so many things going on here. So, breaking it down. NBC Universal, if you did your research, which is so important ... That's the number one advice that I give when you're reaching out to someone. And, you should absolutely reach out to people that you don't know, but you have to be purposeful, concise, and specific. They do not know how they can help you. You have to be able to state it. And you have to be able to navigate it so that it's not like you're asking, "Hey, take care of me, me, me, me." You have to bring value back to the table, and it's hard to do all in one email.

So, with this, you want specific. One of the things that was wrong with it is that NBC Universal is huge. So, are you looking for something in the business department? Are you looking at something for a specific show? Are you looking at something in the marketing department? So, really doing your research is really important, and one of the ways that you can do that ... Go look at job descriptions online and become acquainted with what the company is and what are the roles and how do they look like.

Menendez: So, if she had sent a better note, if she had sent the best note possible, what would it have said instead?

Pierre-Bravo: Yeah, and in the book, I show a note that really ties in everything together, which would sound something like, "Hello. My name is blah, blah, blah. I noticed that you are a booking producer at Morning Joe. My background is in publicity,” or whatever your background is, “and I noticed that you work with tons of different guests every morning. I'd love to learn a little bit more about the editorial part that you do. I actually also went to Miami University." You don't have to go to the same college as me. Just do some type of relative background, or something that could connect us.

And be flexible. Don't say, "I'd like to get on a call tomorrow," or, "Do you have time for coffee?" Because some people, the higher up you go, the less time that

Latina to Latina: Daniela Pierre-Bravo Teaches Us How to ‘Earn It’ 8

they have to meet people in person. You shouldn't not ask for it, but just be kind of mindful of who you're talking to.

Menendez: Right. One of the things that drives me bananas—and I'd say this happens way more than you'd imagine, is that I have someone reach out to me for career advice, which I'm really happy to give, and I really also try to follow up with to-dos—is how often they'll say, "Well, check in with me in three months. Check in with me in six months.” Like, “Keep on me, because I have a lot going on and I don't want to drop the ball." And I'll never hear from the person again.

Pierre-Bravo: Absolutely. Actually, I'm glad you said that, because I love mentoring young women, and if people reach out to me, I absolutely want to respond back if they make it easy for me to do that. And one of the things, it's like, when people are so busy, especially if you're reaching out to somebody in a big organization, or that has a lot of job responsibilities, don't feel bad about ... I don't want to say nagging, but keep at it. Follow up, because there's so many times that I'll think of somebody that I didn't get a chance to respond to in real-time and can't find their email because they never did the follow-up.

Menendez: Yep.

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Menendez: All right, let's talk about money. Salary negotiations.

Pierre-Bravo: More challenging than we act like it is. This is what was hard for me, because I had the imposter syndrome from the moment I walked in the door, and I really had to fight it from day one.

So, going into the negotiating table, that's like the one thing you need to make sure that you completely clear yourself. Because what I've learned is that when you're negotiating for money, it has nothing to do with you personally and it has everything to do with the labor that you bring to the table. And, once you can differentiate that and take every personal thing about you outside of the equation and stop thinking about, "Oh, well my boss, maybe he won't like me because I'm asking for too much," or "Maybe he thinks that I shouldn't be asking this." Take that out of your brain. Think about the labor, think about all the hard work that you've been doing, the long hours, which, by the way, women are always told to do and they do it.

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Take all those things into consideration, because those are going to be your real leverages. And that's going to empower you to find the words. Don't take it personal, though, because it never works.

Menendez: It stood out to me on the page that, while Latinas are no stranger to hard work, we have a different relationship to the word ambition than a lot of other women.

Pierre-Bravo: Yes, yes. It's this idea, culturally ... My mother and grandmother are great examples: hard-working women, have taught me the value of a dollar, all that good stuff. Yet, culturally, they've told me, "Oh, don't worry. You know, your turn will come." Even the word, if you say it out loud, ambicioso, it's got this sort of negative—

Menendez: It's got a hard edge to it, for sure.

Pierre-Bravo: It's like you're thinking about yourself and not other people, and what other culture is more about people than our own, right? And so, I think that being ambitious is not about alienating yourself and being this sort of like iconoclastic, only cares about themselves. But, it's all of the things that constitute getting to the top, and ambition. And, it's not only just working hard and putting yourself out there, but it's being able to turn the corner and asking for advancement.

Because, you know, one of the things that I've noticed with the women that we interviewed for the book is that women get into these roles where two and three years into the job, they're stuck with like, administrative work. And, they're stuck with all of the things that men don't have to do, that all of the sudden they're climbing up the ladder, because women have always been told that they need to work the long hours and do all the work. But, they don't know when to raise their hand. And that is when ambition is really important.

Menendez: Right. So powers you through. Do you think, though, for Latinas in particular, that some of it has to do with the patriarchal societies we come from? I mean, and this idea that ambition is somehow unfeminine?

Pierre-Bravo: Mm-hmm. Well, I think if we look at ambition, I can say all of the women in my life are hard-working, and they really put their families first. But, they don't embrace ambition the way that our generation does, and I think that we do come from an environment where machismo is a real thing. And, generationally, that's changing. We did the Harvard research and we found out that 76% of young Caucasian women are actually embracing the word “ambition.” But, that number is a lot lower for women in the Latino community. So, I think it has to do with, of course, this idea of machismo that has been so ingrained in our cultures. But, I think our generation is getting a lot better of calling BS.

Menendez: So, I love career advice. I'm a careerist. I've always wanted to know how to navigate my career, so I've read a lot of these books. I love them. I also worry that career advice, at large, is a form of gaslighting, that it leans a little too heavily on this idea that you can change all of your circumstances. Or that, if women just approached things differently, that somehow that will compensate for all of the structural issues that underlie this, like equal pay.

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Right? I would never want someone to walk away from your book thinking, "Well, if I just negotiated harder, then I could close the pay gap.”

Pierre-Bravo: Right, and there are certain things that are left up to corporations and institutions to fix, because equal pay is much broader than just one person. But, I do think that there are parts of the equations that women can control, and I think that the beauty of this book is that we don't just talk about negotiating and asking for what you're worth when you're at the negotiating table. We talk about all of the things that need to happen before then, to build that advocating power. Because, that's really what's going to set the tone of difference when you get to the negotiating table. Because, it's really, if you haven't done certain things, like consistently raise your hand or consistently ask for more from the beginning of your careers, it's kind of too late when you get to the negotiating table. You've got to build real, raw data.

Menendez: 2012, the day Obama made his DACA announcement, where were you?

Pierre-Bravo: Yeah. I was in my internship that was unpaid at Bad Boy Entertainment. I was sitting at my desk. And we didn't have TVs, because I was stuck in a cubicle. But, I remember getting a text message from a family member telling me to turn on the TV. And, I remember just being aghast with so much emotion because I, obviously, scrolled through the internet and there it was. President Obama, executive action on deferred action. And, it was so life-changing. I felt like I needed to get out of there and like, do a happy dance.

But, I couldn't tell anybody. I was still in the shadows until DACA came out. And so, it was just a moment of complete, complete gratitude, above everything else, and so much emotion and so much ... Looking at the future and saying, "There are so many possibilities." No matter how many difficulties I had, no matter how many obstacles or closed doors—not only at the moment that I had but that could be—I was so filled with optimism.

Menendez: And the day it was revoked?

Pierre-Bravo: I was in Chile. Yeah, I had a very sick family member, and I had advanced parole, and I was taking care of somebody that was really sick. And I didn't know what I was going to do. I didn't know if I could go back into the country. Can you imagine? I had built this career up. I was in the middle of book-writing. And, I ended up consulting with a lawyer while I was away. I think all of us were kind of in a frenzy, whether you were out of the country or in the country. We didn't know what was going to happen.

And, I ended up being one of the first DACA recipients to come back to JFK, and they didn't know what to do with me.

Menendez: Meaning what? TSA?

Pierre-Bravo: TSA. TSA, because you go through the immigration line, and because I'm a DACA recipient, you get brought into a room where you have to wait a little bit because it's kind of an extra inspection. And they didn't know what to do with me.

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One TSA agent told me, "I don't think this is going to work. DACA's done." And what are you going to do in this situation? So, you're going to sit down and kind of make them go through everything ... And you have to know your rights, right? So I had consulted with a lawyer and actually said, "Well, you know what? I was given advance parole since X and X time, and I'm here in the country before then." And so, it took them a little bit of time, but they let me back in, which, you know, legally, they had to do.

Menendez: What's the number one thing you want other Latinas to take away from Earn It!? ​ ​

Pierre-Bravo: If you're a Latina that doesn't have a way in the door, or that doesn't have parents who've paved the path forward, embrace the fact that you are the first one at the table that looks like you or that has your background, because there's so much complexity that comes with knowing a different part of culture that many people here don't necessarily know as we do. And, it's such an opportunity to be able to not only just add that extra value to any company or organization, but we really need to be able to embrace that for ourselves and make it part of our narrative and own it.

Menendez: Daniela, thank you so much.

Pierre-Bravo: Thank you so much. This was so fun.

Menendez: Thanks for joining us today. Latina to Latina is owned and executive produced by Juleyka Lantigua-Williams and me. Maria Murriel was the sound designer on this episode.

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CITATION:

Menendez, Alicia, host. “Daniela Pierre-Bravo Teaches Us How to ‘Earn It’.” Latina to Latina, Lantigua ​ ​ ​ ​ Williams & Co., June 24, 2019. LatinaToLatina.com.

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Latina to Latina: Daniela Pierre-Bravo Teaches Us How to ‘Earn It’ 12